Global Business Professor’s latest Audio Interview, “Intercultural Business Skills in France” features Julia Gaspar-Bates. Ms. Gaspar-Bates is a senior consultant at Berlitz and has been working with Berlitz for 15 years.
In the 10-minute Audio Interview, Ms. Gaspar-Bates discusses and answers these questions:
- What are the main business challenges Americans might anticipate working with the French?
- What are the most important factors to consider when building a relationship with a potential French customer?
- Decision-making practices differ greatly from one culture to the next. How would the French typically make decisions?
- What are some tips you would give an American wanting to do business with the French?
Audio Interview Guest
Ms. Julia Gaspar-Bates, Senior Consultant
Berlitz
Download Berlitz information brochures below
- Language Instruction
- Virtual Classroom
- Business Communications Skills (English-language)
- Language & Cultural Consulting Services
- Cultural Consulting
About Julia Gaspar-Bates
Julia Gaspar-Bates, M.A., is a certified cross-cultural trainer and consultant who works with individuals and groups from the U.S. and abroad to facilitate the challenges of working and communicating across cultures.
Julia brings a wealth of personal, professional, and educational experience to her work. With nearly 30 years experience working in international business and educational environments Julia began her career working or consulting for a variety of companies and organizations doing global account management, international market research, product development and translation/interpretation. In her current role as an intercultural consultant, Julia has designed and delivered customized training programs and seminars for thousands of executives, students and educators, military personnel and governmental and non-governmental workers from around the world. She has delivered workshops on four continents in multiple foreign languages focusing on more than a dozen cultures. A few of her varied projects include working with a French multinational corporation to help strategize its needs for global training, designing a customized workshop to be rolled-out in 80 countries, and designing and delivering train-the-trainers workshops globally to in-house staff; consulting with the United States Air Force to teach online courses to increase the cultural competence of service members stationed around the world and subsequently helping re-design the course curriculum, and delivering customized workshops on unconscious bias for stakeholders in both the public and private sectors. Currently, Julia acts an as advisor to the World Bank to further develop its intercultural programing.
Julia is also able to share her insights and expertise from a personal perspective. A bi-cultural British-American, Julia was born in London and grew up in the United States. With a Bachelor’s degree in Romance Languages, Julia is fluent in French, Spanish, and Italian and is able to incorporate a deep understanding of the complexities of communicating across linguistic barriers into her work. She lived and worked in Paris, France for over seven years, and has also lived in Mexico, Italy, and Switzerland. Julia has traveled to more than 45 countries on five continents in both a personal and professional context. Her seminars are peppered with personal anecdotes sharpened from a lifetime of interacting and working with people from different cultures. Combined with her sound foundation in intercultural theory gleaned from her graduate studies in Intercultural Relations, Julia is able to connect with her clients and participants in her programs and provide a deep awareness of the “whys” behind behavior.
Julia has been an Adjunct Professor at The George Washington University since 2007 where she teaches a graduate level course entitled “Designing and Implementing Cross-Cultural Training Programs” and has also taught at University of Maryland. She served as Executive Coordinator for SIETAR’s (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research) Washington DC chapter from 2007-2010, co-chaired the SIETAR USA Annual Conference in 2013 and currently serves on SIETAR USA’s Board of Directors. She is an active member of the French-American Chamber of Commerce of Washington DC. She frequently presents on intercultural topics at conferences and for professional groups. Julia also writes a column for the Hyattsville Life & Times newspaper entitled “Cultural Connections” http://hyattsvillelife.com/category/columns/cultural-connections/.
